The present invention relates to the field of cotton processing and represents a further improvement on the lint cleaners of U.S. Pat. Nos. 6,088,881 and 7,779,514 B2. U.S. Pat. No. 7,779,514B2 describes apparatus that reduces fiber damage by eliminating the formation of the cotton tufts into a batt, but rather, individually applies the tufts of cotton as they come from the gin stand in an airstream directly onto the teeth of the lint cleaner cleaning cylinder teeth without mechanically restraining the tufts. Such a device is for use with lint cleaners that have short, densely spaced teeth on a solid cylinder which currently are universally used in saw gins on upland cotton.
Other prior methods and apparatus include those such as illustrated in U.S. Pat. No. 6,088,881, incorporated herein by reference, wherein a revolving perforated drum is used to allow air flow through the drum such that a cleaning cylinder may remove cotton fiber from the perforated drum and carry it past a plurality of cleaning grid bars, thereby separating the airstream, and removing foreign matter from the fibers, before the fiber is doffed from the cleaning cylinder for subsequent air flow to downstream processing.
As mentioned above, U.S. Pat. Nos. 6,088,881 and 7,779,514 B2 have shown that they preserve the spinning quality of the lint, and countries that use scientific lint quality evaluation systems such as H.V.I. (High Volume Instrumentation) generally reward the lint produced on these lint cleaners. However, many countries and merchants value the well combed, “smooth” appearance above the H.V.I. evaluations, and thus the use of lint cleaners using the features of these patents has been somewhat limited.